The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD

When The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker was first released in 2002, it was ahead of its time.

It was a landmark title that made a phenomenal and instantaneous artistic impression, so much so that when Nintendo Co. Ltd. announced it would be creating an HD remake for the Wii U, fans of the Zelda series rejoiced.

While the HD remake improves on the GameCube original with a plethora of small changes showing the fundamental game to be shockingly playable, Wind Waker‘s biggest flaw — it’s a game that feels like butter scraped over too much bread — still remains.

Upon its release, Windwaker faced a huge backlash, mostly over its cell-shaded cartoon aesthetic. With Zelda (and most of Nintendo’s franchises), players were used to getting the same game repeated over again each console generation with enhancements based on the hardware.

This pattern had played itself out linearly with the Zelda series up to 2002. The Legend of Zelda begat Link to the Past which lead to Ocarina of Time. Along the way were some interesting side stories (Link’s Awakening, Majora’s Mask) which weren’t seen as “main” entries in the series. Zelda’s only real divergence to this pattern was 1987’s Zelda II: The Adventure of Link which was generally rejected by fans.

So when Nintendo not only rejected the formula of “the old game but bigger and better” with Wind Waker‘s visual style, but with its open-water world design, the most reactionary fans loudly expressed their dismay. Looking back, these arguments are patently absurd. Wind Waker‘s distinct visual style and world building (mixed with perhaps the best score of the entire series) are what make it timeless, and what makes the HD remake relevant now almost eleven years later*.

The negative reaction to Wind Waker was so fierce that the next game in the series, Twilight Princess, marked a strong return to the series formula, and came out to much praise in 2006.

Since then, opinions of the two games have essentially reversed. Wind Waker is seen as a singular artistic landmark, and Twilight Princess has become a tiresome slog emblematic of what happens when you listen too much to fans.

Unfortunately, while the world and art style of Windwaker represent artistic landmarks, the game sets up a framework for a quest which feels sadly half finished.

The game simply presents a much bigger world than it has interesting things to do within.

For those just dipping into the game for the first time, this isn’t necessarily apparent right away. It’s pretty easy to blow through about 50% of Wind Waker‘s dungeons in the first five or six hours of play having only exposed a fraction of the game’s entire map. Yet the remaining half of your quest is played out over the course of 20 to 25 extra hours filled in with a whole lot of tedium.

The HD remake speeds up a lot of this (so it’s more like 5 hours of content stretched over 15 hours as opposed to 20 or 25), by making the final triforce fetch quest much shorter, letting you buy a “swift” sail for your boat so you don’t need to magically rejig the direction of the wind all of the time. However, this never really overcomes the main problem, which is that the game sets up an epic quest without quite enough steps to actually make it feel truly epic.

This isn’t exactly a new take on WW. Nintendo has openly said that there were at least two more dungeons that were planned (and half finished) for Windwaker and the game has a gaping hole where they are missing. The HD version does a much better job at patching this hole up, but the overall game is still still structured around the idea that they’d be there.

(Ultimately, those dungeons ended up in Twilight Princess and couldn’t be finished and included.)

Ironically, Twilight Princess, which is mostly maligned at this point, actually has the opposite pacing problem from WW: The last 2/3s of the game are an amazing cavalcade of new and interesting things to do and dungeons to explore (there are double the number of dungeons in TP over WW), but many players don’t actually get there because the first 1/3 of the game is a slow: a fairly cruddy slog without the arresting style of Windwaker to carry them through.

This may make it seem like I’m more down on Wind Waker than I actually am. There are things the gamedoes which are unparalleled. Its simple to understand, but tactically complex, combat engine is probably the best one in the entire series. The aesthetic really is amazing, and I can’t think of another game which makes you feel more like you’re in a living-breathing cartoon than this one.

The move to HD has taken nothing from the look of the game, and it does not in any way feel like an eleven-year-old game up-resolutioned to HD. From a moment-to-moment gameplay perspective, the entire thing feels quite modern, and many small tweaks (most involving having the menu screen present on the Wii U gamepad) make the experience smoother from end-to-end**.

In fact, it would be tough to think of another HD port which does a better job than this one. Indeed, this is the definitive version of the game.

Much like when it was first released, Wind Waker is a visual and auditory feast and it works brilliantly for its first few hours. The fact that its back end is merely okay***, shouldn’t keep you away from this iconic Zelda experience.

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*Fun fact: there has been as much time since Windwaker came out as there was between Link to the Past and Windwaker. Back

** The single really notable exclusion from the GameCube version of the game is the loss of the Tingle Tuner. In the Gamecube version of Windwaker a second player could hook up a Gameboy advance to the Gamecube and help the main player by using a series of second-screen activities. The exclusion in this version of the game seems fairly bizarre, as the Wii U has a second screen built right into the controller. That said, it would be a much bigger loss if the Tingle Tuner was actually any fun to use in the first place. Back

*** The last dungeon and boss in Wind Waker are amazing. It’s the bit before it that could use work.

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